Perry L. Gardner: Private Journal #23
Thursday, January 19, 1989
It is now time to visit my journal for the first time this year. Many times I have thoughts that would be appropriate here, but the mood passes and nothing is written down. Perhaps I can work on being freer about that. This is my personal journal. It doesn’t all have to be edited copy for publication.
I have had some depression times of late, but right now, I feel good. From time to time, since around Christmas time, I have had strange aches and pains in my groin and leg, and it gets me worrying about cancer, but then it goes away and I feel much better, with more energy than I have felt for a year. I do get tired and take naps, but I feel the sensations are from a system that is healing itself. At least I hope so. I haven’t been to see a doctor, because I don’t know what they can tell me, and I don’t know which one to consult. Dr. Benninghoff, I see in May, and he said to see Dr. Bodi in February. Dr. Steinberg wanted me to come back to see him, but I don’t know why, unless he needs patients.
I have been twitching about the decision on when to go to Florida. If I went today I could arrange to see Dave while he is on leave, but I’m not quite ready to go, and reservations take time, and I’m broke, and I want to be home for Bonnie’s service on the 12th of February. At this point, I feel more comfortable with going in March. There is no time when the calendar is free of conflicts, but the trip has priority—so, Saturday, I call Barbara and get tentative dates set and make reservations, and that’s it.
At the Joseph Campbell-Moyers seminar last night, the topic of life transitions came up, and I have felt the transition from the working career to retirement. I feel comfortable with the idea of taking time to play and study and contemplate. But as yet, I haven’t been able to implement it to my satisfaction. All the things that have to or should be done get in the way. I just sat down and wrote a whole page of things that should be done this year. Some will have to be done, and some won’t get done, but it is all a large burden.
Meanwhile, there is another approach: to sit down and write what I would really like to do instead of what I should do. I’m sure I would get satisfaction out of accomplishing either, but the list is endless, and at times, seems impossible to accomplish. Identify the blocks to action.
Well, a clue to what I would like is my recent consuming interest in ship models, which has also erupted as a renewed interest in model airplanes—this latter has taken me back to memories of my teens when I was a model airplane fan, even though I seldom had the money to buy the kits I wanted. I usually traced plans out of magazines I brought home from the library—I was too considerate to slice plans out of magazines, as some uncouth characters did.
It reminds me of my first box of kits my mother gave me on my 12th birthday. As I recall, there were six Ideal kits in a corrugated box. Each was for 6-inch wingspan, solid models of balsa. It seems like for the first year I would take the kit out of the box and drool over the plans, but not cut the wood. When I finally got the courage, I built the planes over quite a time span. It was a clandestine operation in my room, where I kept projects in progress under my bed because Gramps didn’t approve of such things—they were classed as toys, and I was over the age of 8 and too old for toys. There was a real feel to wheels rolling on track that I enjoy, but that is another subject.
As I recall, the models were first the P6E in olive drab, and I put the radiator under the engine, streamlined fore and aft rather than athwart ships, since I didn’t know about radiator coils and heat transfer. The P6E is always a favorite of mine—have one now and was thrilled with seeing the real thing at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.
The other models were the supermarine S-6B racing seaplane that won the Schneider trophy, an Autogyro, Laird Solution or Supersolution, Curtiss Helldiver with swept back upper wing, and I think it was the GEEBEE Sportster or Supersportster (or was it Wedell Williams?). It was the Golden Age of Aviation that I grew up with and lived through, and it still holds my main interest. WWI planes and post-WWII jets don’t have the same appeal to me. That is why the C-D catalogue I just got gives me pleasure, just going through it. It was these planes from the 30ies that led me to Grumman, because I was so impressed by the F2F & F3F & F6F.
Right now, I want to order the plans for some of these planes, but can I ever get it together to actually build one? The S6B and the Howard Hughes racer, the FIIC-2, because it was a beautiful model, and the NC-4 because Dad had some connections with it—more genealogy research—another current interest—. Some series to build—Schneider Cup Seaplanes, Thomson trophy racers, Grumman series, and planes I have flown in from Waco to Luscombe 8A, PT19, BT-13, AT-10, AT-11—the list goes on.
Then there is the renewed interest in ship models. For years, I’ve browsed through my American Ship Models book by Grimwood but never done anything about it. Then there was the lecture at the Vanderbilt museum on building ship models, which led to the meetings of the L.I. Ship Model Society. At the same time, there were the beautiful paintings in the book I bought on sailing ships, and the stories that went with them. That resurrected a latent interest in Captain Cook, and I read two books about him, and now the book on Building the Wooden Fighting Ship, which connects with Cook, because it was in the same era of the British Navy and the same shipyards where his ships were made ready, or not made ready, for his famous voyages. Building ships of wood was an impressive undertaking and so reminiscent of the cathedral building of an earlier time. With hand tools and simple machines, these works were done.
This interest in building things has led to the feeling that there is an urge to create that is in each of us and sometimes is allowed to burst forth. When it is stifled, I am frustrated and don’t know why. This is what I want to do—with hand and eye and brain in action to create.